


talking trees, dragonflies, and bees

by detectivemeer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Darkness Around The Heart, Episode: s03e13 Anchors, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hallucinations, Haunting, Mental Instability, Self-Harm, death ideation, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 15:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5545511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detectivemeer/pseuds/detectivemeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In, out. It's all about patience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	talking trees, dragonflies, and bees

**Author's Note:**

> a dark twist to that moment in 3x13 where allison shoots an arrow at lydia and isaac catches it in just the nick of time. title spliced from "Dirty Paws" by Of Monsters and Men.

For a second, she feels victorious. When she sees the body drop, her aim flawless, the arrow sinking right in the middle of Kate's forehead. You can't take this from me, she thinks, flexing her fingers around her bow, heart thumping hard in her chest.

"Fuck! Fucking fuck, fuck." Isaac says, on his knees next to Kate, his hands full of wet leaves and red hair which. Is a bit strange. He's breathing fast, hands fluttering around Kate's face, slick with blood and shaking. "Jesus Christ, oh God, Jesus."

"Oh." Allison says. It isn't anything huge, just a shift in the earth, her boots covered with mud, and in the same way she knows the sky is blue without looking, she knows that Lydia is dead.

"Oh." She repeats, bow falling to the ground, her knees following it down. She looks at the dirt, rotten leaves, damp and brown, veins brittle and thin, stretching out like spiderwebs. She flattens her palms against her thighs, rubbing hard and fast against her bare skin. _Wake up_ , she thinks. _Wake up._

Kate is laughing behind her.

-

  Isaac calls Scott, of course he does. She waits for the ice in her lungs to thaw, for the warmth of his touch, she wants nothing more than to fall into him then, but.

Scott looks at her with something she's never seen on him before, not directed at her, not ever. It burns her skin with shame, makes her sick with it and she breaks her gaze away because she's a coward and his fear and disappointment and grief are too much, too vivid and real and-- ( _okay, wake up, wake up now_ )

-

She thinks maybe this is the worst game of telephone, because Scott calls her dad who calls Deaton and they're all standing there and Lydia's eyes are still open. Allison tips her head back, and the canopy of fall leaves against crisp autumn blue sky is breathtakingly lovely. Much too lovely to be real. It can't be real. It can't.

Her dad's hand comes down hard on her shoulder. His eyes are big and full of pity. She looks away and swallows against the sudden nausea.

  -

  They go back home. Someone makes her tea, and she wraps her hands around the mug even though the ceramic burns her. They all gather in the living room to discuss, to, fuck--she doesn't know. But they leave her in her room with her tea like a child.

She's silent and breathless, back against the wall, peering at them, all hunched and haunted looking from where they're gathered around the coffee table. She wants to laugh with the absurdity of it all.

"I tried," she hears Isaac sob. Scott shushes him, pulls him into hug, petting his hair and murmuring gentle nonsense. "I tried, I tried, I tried."

Too bad you can't say the same. Kate grins at her, mouth full of teeth. Big, white teeth that elongate into fangs and lunge forward to rip her throat out.

Allison's knuckles rip open with her scream and she swallows the blood with her panic, sliding down the wall and curling up, face in her knees.  ( _you can wake up now, please oh please, let me wake up now_ )

  -

She doesn't wait for the cover story or the handcuffs, whichever they decide to sentence her with, she doesn't wait around to find out. She grabs a duffel bag from under her bed, adds her favorite throwing knives, one of her dad's handguns, and clears out both cash stashes he keeps in the apartment. She slips out, keys pressed firmly in hand and broken silver chain pooled on her desk, neck bare and heartbeat steady.

Allison takes her dad's car as far as she knows she can. Takes the bus to a new city and then a new bus to a new state. She tries to sleep but vague, red dreams jerk her awake ( _wake up, wake up, wake--_ ) on every bump along the way. It's two days later and she's somewhere in the awful dry heat of Nevada, exhaustion making her eyes burn, paying cash for a hideous car that no one can trace her back to.

"And what, exactly, is your plan, huh? Gonna live on the road? Join a traveling circus? I bet you could make an act out of yourself, arrows and gymnastics and all." Kate says, chin propped against the back of the seat, her breath sickly hot on Allison's skin.

Lydia laughs from the passenger seat. Leaves in her hair, spread out wild and red against the gray interior. "I'd buy a ticket." Blood around her mouth and her eyes are nothing but empty sockets, spiderwebs hung in the hollow of them.

Allison clenches her fingers around the steering wheel, breathes in, out.

-

Allison opens the door to her motel room and suppresses a scream.

  Lydia's lying on the bed, perfectly still, blue and chill, lips deep purple, cheeks sallow. There are tiny, wriggling white maggots spilling out of her skin.

"Being a corpse will do that to a person, you know. Or, I guess I'd know better than you." Kate throws balled up pieces of paper into the waste basket. "It's kinda creepy, but at least she doesn't stink."

Allison makes dinner. Eats. Cleans. Lies on the ground, closes her eyes, and prays for the whole building to just collapse around her.

-

  She's standing in a gas station in front of the refrigerated section, a glass bottle of some kind of super drink in her hand. It's a dirty orange color, and the label is decorated with gold swirls. Her arm aches.

"Hey lady, you gonna buy something or--" Allison is out the door before the man can finish, turning the corner and doubling over to vomit onto asphalt.

"We should go to the beach," says Lydia, stretching her arms over head, catlike and luxurious. She tips her head back to the sun, and smiles. "I could use a tan."

Allison wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. There's gauze poking out from her sleeve, wrapped around her arm from wrist to elbow. When did that happen. What time is it, what town is she in, where--

"Fuck." She presses her palms to her temples, and curls down and into herself, elbows on her knees. "Fuck, I'm losing my mind."

"Well, yeah," says Lydia.

-

"Maybe it's a banshee thing. Maybe we get to haunt our loved ones. Or our murderers." She strokes hair from Allison's forehead, smirks. "Or in my case both."

"I didn't mean to," Allison whispers. "If I could take it back, if I... I didn't know what I was doing."

"No," she says, sad and soft. "You didn't. But that doesn't do me much good, does it?"

"It's not a banshee thing." Kate chimes, spilling sideways out of a chair across the room, picking her nails with a knife. "You're just cracked."

"It could be both."

It's a dream, Allison thinks. It's a dream, she's dreaming, dreaming, dreaming

-

She's at the beach, with sand between her toes, and she carves the words into her forearms. Saltwater stings the wound as she washes the blood away. Lydia comes up behind her, arms folding around her waist, chin pressed on her shoulder. She can smell her perfume and feel her warm breath in her ear and she closes her eyes. The words throb with her heart beat and she breathes in the ocean as the red, inflamed lines of her skin pulse, _wake up wake up wake up wake up._

Lydia kisses her neck and whispers, _no._

-

  "Leave me alone."

"Ally," Lydia pouts.

Allison turns on her side, squeezes her eyes shut. "You didn't call me that."

-

In her dreams, she notches the arrow. Breathes in, out. Fingers steady. In, out.

She can never see their faces, but when she hunts them they look at her and trust so much it makes her want to shake. (She doesn't; of course she doesn't, in, out, fingers steady, of course.)

They look down at their chest, rapid red stain spreading through their shirt. She sits with them, holds their hand, and waits.

In, out. It's all about patience.

-

“Call him,” Kate goads. She picks up the phone, wraps the cord around her index finger, her wrist, her whole arm. “I bet he’s just dying to talk to you.”

Allison tries not to think of Scott often. Sometimes he creeps into her dreams, waking and otherwise. Sometimes he and Lydia look at her and just smile. Sometimes she closes her eyes and Scott is a monster and Stiles is made of string. She wonders what they see of her, when they dream.

She imagines dialing his number. Hearing his voice sounding so old and so tired, worn and worried. She could sink right into it. Their breath loud, crackling in the receivers.

"Scott," she would say, soft and pleading.

"Allison," and her chest hurts with the thought of it. She can see his wrinkled brow and concerned frown, warm eyes and warm hands covering hers. “Allison.” Her name never sounded so real but when it came from his lips. Wonder and affection and truth.

“Ally,” Lydia says. She’s so bright it’s hard to look at her. Headlights on a dark road. Careful, don’t crash.

Allison says, “They’re better off.”

Lydia’s closeness is harsh, grating. She burns a trail of goosebumps down Allison’s neck with the tip of her finger. “You’re probably right.”

-

  She thinks of showing up on his doorstep, and she'd wait for him to turn her away, to hate her, to brand her murderer like he should. But she knows he wouldn't. She couldn't survive in face of his forgiveness. So she can't go back. They can handle themselves.

-

Uneaten fry ends and charred bits of hamburger spill across the dashboard. "Fucking crumbs," she grumbles.

Kate screams a laugh. Lydia screams. 

Allison knocks the crumbs off the dash and rips a bite off her burger. The night is eerie; parking lot all slick oil ground and witching street lamps and hissing neon. Kate disappears from the rearview mirror. Lydia's voice goes with it, but her mouth is left open, a wide, noiseless gape. Allison tosses a piece of tomato at her, but it bounces off the headrest and onto the black-hole of the floor. Allison punches the radio on, sucks cheese off her thumb.

"Look what you've done," says Lydia, crackling through the speakers. Allison's blood is ice. Lydia stares at her, wide-eyed, and her voice projects through the shitty, staticky radio, "Ally, Ally, Ally. Allyoxenfree. Look what you've done to me." She laughs. It buzzes around the car, shaking the windshield, shaking Allison's bones. Like a hundred thousand insects shrieking distantly, flying closer.

Allison says, "I'm sorry," crumpling like the greasy paper bag in the cup holder. She slams at the radio but the bugs burn closer, closer, Lydia's breath vibrates on the back of her neck and she says, again and again and again, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry._  

"Let me out!" She throws her whole body weight against the door but it only rocks the car. Lydia closes her mouth and touches her hands to the skin of Allison's collarbone. The silence is loud in the sudden aftermath. Allison's ears hum. Lydia leans so, so close.  _Monster_ , the word chokes Allison's throat. Lydia presses her lips, her teeth, at the center of Allison's nervous, fluttering throat. Allison lets her, holds her breath. 

"Look what you've done," Lydia says, so soft, disappointed. She clucks and shake her head. She is dead. She is a corpse, every part of her is rotting. She takes one of Allison's fries, bites it in half, and chews, slowly. A quiet noise rumbles in her chest and she flicks the rest of it to the dash. "Take us home."

Allison sets her fingers on the keys but then the request catches up to her. A furious grief rises up in her, food sitting cold and heavy in her stomach suddenly. "Where's that?" she asks, but when she turns, Lydia's gone. The radio sputters, spitting out some pop song that sends chills down her spine. The engine whines to life and she tosses her crumbs and bag onto the passenger seat, focuses on breathing. 

-

"I'm so lonely, Ally," Lydia whispers, quietly. She's so whole and human. Her lips are luxury, her hands sinfully warm and solid on Allison's hips. "I barely see you... and it's not the same."

"Stop," she says, despair bubbling up. "Stop, you're not--"

"Please," Lydia drops a kiss just left of Allison's bellybutton. "Please. It'd be so much better, with you here. Who's going to miss you, anyway?"

-

She kisses a girl with red hair and wide eyes and skin dusted in freckles. She has a worker's hands, strong and skin cracked and dry, with knobbly knuckles that slide up Allison's thigh. Allison slips their hands together, and lets herself be tugged out a back door and into the alleyway behind the club. Her name is Sandy or Brandy or something ending in that long _e_ sound, anyway. It curls over her tongue like smoke, drawn-out and saccharine, and she presses it against the girl's skin. She tastes like sweat and perfume and tequila. Allison licks into her mouth, presses her up against the wall and takes and takes, and she's soft and pliant beneath her, shuddering and more than happy to give. Allison bites her lower lip, draws blood, and it's indistinguishable on her already red-lipstick stained lips. She thinks about strangling her and kissing the blue bruises her thumbs will leave. There is fire under her skin and she needs to carve it out, wants to hook a knife into her arm and watch the flames seep to the ground.

Instead she's shoved away, and the girl spits blood on asphalt.

"Fucking vampire freak," she mutters, stumbling away.

Allison drops her forehead to the cool brick wall. She wakes up in a filthy motel room, sweaty skin sticking cheap sheets to her.

(And she wakes up and up and up.)

-

Guns are so much louder and pulling a trigger feels so much heavier than releasing an arrow.

She keeps hers in her bag, a few extra clips swimming around in there with it. She cleans it, cleans each individual bullet, she strips it apart and polishes each piece, reassembles it and starts over again.

She prefers arrows, but there is something relaxing about the rhythm of it, taking it apart, putting it together, over and over.

-

"What if you being dead is the dream," Allison whispers.

Lydia laughs, so rich and full and beautiful Allison's heart nearly breaks from it. “Oh, sweetie,” Lydia grins; she could consume the earth when she smiles.

-

  She can't hold down a job for very long because it turns out talking to dead people on the clock is a no-no. Besides, she's never in one place long enough for a steady gig. So she gets money when she can, and dips into the cash she took from her dad when she can't. She's frugal and smart, and while she's not going hungry, her body is reshaping itself, lean and strong and sharp, all muscle and bone. She's rents dirt cheap apartments or crashes in crappy motels. Buses and free rides from dubious strangers (she has four knives on her at all times, not that she needs them; her hands are more than enough). She drinks water and smiles her way into free beers and free beds and free meals while they're snoring, tangled in the sheets behind her.

-

She wakes up in bed with a man whose skin is scattered with tattoos and scars. She steals his cigarettes and wallet and she's in Toronto and New York and Chicago and some no-name pit stop between two towns that aren't on a map, it doesn't matter, really, there is always a man with too many tattoos and too many beers and too much self pity, hands on her hips, cigarettes on his lips, ghosts hanging in his breath. There is always a city with black skies and cold nights to shelter her. Some things don't change.

"Should I be jealous?" Lydia asks, swinging her legs, crossed at the ankles, from her perch on the kitchen island. Allison licks mustard off her finger, and takes a bite of her sandwich.

"You don't even exist."

A sigh, an eye roll. "So you keep saying." Lydia reaches out with her legs, locking them behind Allison's back and tugging her forward. "I say, that if you want to get fucked, all you need to do is ask."

"Yeah, but you can't give me food after."

"So high-maintenance."

Allison tucks wayward strands of hair behind Lydia's ear, keeps her hand there to stroke her cheek. "You're one to talk."

-

_Wake up_ , she thinks.  She isn't even sure what that means, anymore.

-

She's had too much to drink, took a few pills she probably shouldn't have, and Kate is laughing, covered in blood, throat torn open and raw, laughing in the middle of the room. Her neighbor is blasting some awful kind of music, all thudding bass and no vocals. Her head pounds with the booze and the noise and Kate's laughing and dancing, twirling Lydia around on bloody fingers.

"Stop," she tells them. They're spinning, spinning, spinning red and black. The walls thrum with music and she has the deep desire to punish someone, to hit something for the sake of hurting it.

"Join us!" Lydia laughs, and there's a hole in her forehead, a perfect trickle of blood escaping it.

"You're dead," Allison chokes. It's too much, it's all too much, they're dead, the both of them. Maybe Allison is too, maybe this is her hell, her penance, but she doesn't care. She just wants out. Wake up, wake up, wake up, but she can't, and it takes everything inside of her not to just scream. "I can't do it anymore, please, just leave me alone. I'm sorry. God, please."

But they don't listen, and everything is spinning, so fast and loud. She feels sick. She killed her best friend in the whole fucking world and she wants to die with the way that thought fills her lungs, rises in her throat.

"Get out of me!" She shrieks, clutching her head, blood roaring and nails drawing thin red lines from temple to jaw. She grabs the glass and slams it to the ground, screams ripping from her chest, desperate and afraid and, "Get out of my fucking head, _get out!_ "

-

Twenty days. Their absence burrows under her skin, a living, buzzing thing. Twenty days without so much a glimpse of Lydia's blood red hair or Kate's smirk, of anything that would suggest any kind of blurring lines of reality.

She looks for them everywhere. Sits in the middle of the room for a whole day, doing nothing, just waiting. She screams Lydia's name in the shower and breaks tile under her fists, blood pinkening the water as it circles the drain. She sleeps more than usual, hoping to dream of them, but nothing.

Then, day twenty-one, she opens her apartment door and Lydia is sitting on her couch and it feels like a sledgehammer to the sternum.

She falls to her knees in front of Lydia, buries her head in her stomach.

"I'm sorry," she hiccups around the words, breath coming too fast, her head dizzy with relief, and clutches at Lydia's dress with all of her strength, her heart beating out a desperate chant of _don't go don't go don't go_. "I'm so sorry, please I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, don't leave, don't leave, please, I'm sorry."

"Oh, sweetie." Lydia cups her cheek and her eyes are full of pity. Her nails dig into Allison's skin, she smiles softly. It feels like forgiveness and Allison sobs.

  -

This her routine. She wakes and eats and sometimes Lydia is there healthy and whole and sometimes Kate is there covered in blood and sometimes they are just voices at the edge of her mind. She works. She drinks. She sleeps. She wakes again. Sometimes she's almost certain that there's a difference between them.

There's a creepy guy who lives across the hall, and she's pretty sure she's going to break his fingers if he looks at her one more time.

"You should pick him apart, piece by piece. Burn each one in acid." Lydia cocks her head, sprawled out on the bed on her stomach, ankles crossed and swinging at the ceiling. "Or feed them to beetles."

"Beetles are boring," says Kate.

Lydia rolls her eyes and keeps flicking through some trashy magazine. "You have no vision."

"Hey, too fast, not all of us can read a thousand words a second."

With a great sigh, Lydia flips back a page, and Kate grins, leaning against Lydia's shoulder to get a better view.

Allison drops to her knees in front of the bed. Her smile is so big it hurts her cheeks. (Sometimes, sometimes she never wants to wake up at all.)

-

Lydia's fingers make Allison feel like a gun: she is broken to pieces and put back together by the red of Lydia's lips and the heat of her breath, she is reassembled over and over and she is falling in love with a ghost.

"You're not real," she says. They're naked on the sheets, the room is quiet but for the lazily whirring overhead fan and the rustle of skin against fabric against skin. "This isn't real."

"I am," Lydia says. She brings Allison's fingers to her mouth, kisses each one of them and then her palm. Leaves lipstick marks on the pads of her fingers, and a full imprint of her lips in the middle of her hand. "I'm real, I'm here, I'm here."

Allison touches Lydia's hair and cheeks and nose and thighs and neck, warm and soft and perfect. "You're a liar." Can hallucinations even be liars? She supposes not. They can't really be anything, since they are the absence of everything, really. Negative space. She's falling in love with her own fractured mind and bent reality.

She tips her head back and laughs as Lydia kisses the column of her neck.

  -

She wakes up in a white room with a white bed and white sheets, white straps around her wrists and a nurse with a white dress and white pills. (Not this one, don't let it be this one--)

Lydia is filing her nails in a chair by the bed. "Honestly, Allison, you'd think you'd've picked a more romantic first date spot." And Allison laughs so hard she can't breathe.

She wakes up laughing, falls to the dirty motel floor with her sides shaking. She traces Lydia's name into the carpet, and waits as the cold sweat on her neck dries.

-

"Did you love me before you killed me?" Lydia asks. It's dark and they're on their sides, sharing a pillow, sharing breaths. (No, wrong, wrong, wrong, ghosts don't breathe, ghosts don't--)

Allison shuts her eyes, or wants to, or tries to, but she can still see Lydia there, perfect in the pale moonlight. Her skin glows and her eyes are black and her hair deep, dark red. "I don't know." She reaches out, twirls Lydia's hair around her fingers--it slides over her skin, soft as satin. "I loved you, but not... not like... Maybe. Maybe I would have gotten there. Maybe I just didn't know it yet. Maybe not. I don't know."

"Did I?"

"I don't know." Allison says, "I hope not. I hope you were just... happy."

"Until you killed me."

Allison shuts her eyes, but her eyelids are red and blue and dirt and leaves. "Yeah. Until I killed you."

-

"Allison," Lydia says. Her mouth is red, red, and there is blood on Allison's hand, shaped in the full imprint of Lydia's lips. "Allison, wake up."

-

She can feel it. She can feel it, all spiraling, fracturing around her.

"You're killing me," she says to Lydia, who has no skin and big, bright eyes.

"Good. You're one step closer to me, then." Close, close, close, Allison doesn't think she can be any closer. Lydia is inside her, twisting around her brain, settling over her soul like a shadow.

Lydia is but bones in her hands and her hair is melting from her skull like candle wax. Somehow she is still more whole than Allison.

"I don't want to die." It doesn't feel like a lie. It doesn't.

-

Glitch, blink, _wake up_. Allison lives on the tip of a pin held between Lydia’s fingers.

Her brain short circuits, hit, hit, blink, blink, sleep or wake or--

Good morning. _Good morning._  Glitch, blink. Shake, shake. Stare at the wall, stare through the perfect entry and exit wound of Lydia’s skull. She’s so beautiful. _Wake up._

First she has to collect Lydia’s skeleton. Two-hundred-six bones. Then it’s a matter of wrapping her in muscle, tissue, ligament. Reassemble her piece by pound of flesh. Every strand of hair. Every flake of skin. She can never find her eyes, though. Lydia stares at her with two black caves, new and perfect and unwhole. Sorry, Allison says, or maybe thinks.

Lydia drags her fingertips from Allison’s forehead to her brow, forcing Allison to close her eyes. She rests the tips of her nails on Allison’s eyelids and they stay like that for a very, very long time. 

-

"If reality means losing you," Allison shrugs, "I'd rather stay here."

"That's sweet. Dumb," says Lydia, lips curling, fingers dancing along the inside of her elbow, "but sweet."

Lydia's hands are so white they're colorless, nearly translucent. Blood red lips. Big bright eyes. Human, inhuman. Living, dead. Real, unreal. Some days Allison's not sure if she’s ever left the woods or the ice. The only truth that cannot be corrupted is she cares less and less about where she is, really.

Because here is Lydia. Lydia, in all her horror. Lydia, in all her beauty. Lydia, corpse-white, blood and blood and blood. Here is Lydia. Here is kissing, screaming, loud, bright, wrathful, forgiving Lydia. Anywhere else is stark and empty. What does it matter, when Allison gets this, gets Lydia's soft mouth on her jaw, on her cheek and lips and neck. Lydia's low, rumbling laughter. _Drag me under,_ Allison thinks. _Take me with you to whatever terrible, beautiful place you live. Just don't leave. Don't leave._

-

Her hands are so heavy and so tired, like her head like her lungs. She wants to open her eyes but it seems such a monumental effort.

"I've got you." The smell of warm earth, hot metal; a breath breaks across Allison's lips. Lydia touches her everywhere and nowhere. Allison wishes she could see her. "I'm here."

Allison blinks. Forest, arrow, wet leaves. Kate snarls and taunts, distantly. Lydia sits in front of her, dead, dead, dead.

She leans her back against a tree. She never liked the weight of guns, really, too bulky, they always felt like they were weighing her down. But this one feels impossibly light, fragile, almost. The magazine slides in place with a quiet click. Safety, _snick_. Gun oil, Lydia's floral perfume, her painted fingernails tipping the barrel up, up. She's so impatient.

-

Allison wakes--

**Author's Note:**

> gigantic thank you to [Pho](http://asexual-luffy.tumblr.com/), without whom this story would still be a sad mess stuck in my drafts <3 i literally started this the day after i watched the ep and have been slowly picking it apart ever since and am _finally_ wiping my hands of it!  
>  only a little shameful self promo: [the tumbls](http://katsofmeer.tumblr.com/)


End file.
